Hybrid Surface-Phonon-Plasmon Polariton Modes in Graphene/Monolayer h-BN Heterostructures

Infrared transmission measurements reveal the hybridization of graphene plasmons and the phonons in a monolayer hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) sheet. Frequency-wavevector dispersion relations of the electromagnetically coupled graphene plasmon/h-BN phonon modes are derived from measurement of nanoresonators with widths varying from 30 to 300 nm. It is shown that the graphene plasmon mode is split into two distinct optical modes that display an anticrossing behavior near the energy of the h-BN optical phonon at 1370 cm^(–1). We explain this behavior as a classical electromagnetic strong-coupling with the highly confined near fields of the graphene plasmons allowing for hybridization with the phonons of the atomically thin h-BN layer to create two clearly separated new surface-phonon-plasmon-polariton (SPPP) modes.